Ten classic games you can actually beat, but probably won’t

From Snake to Pac-Man to Tetris, these games don't actually go on forever.

Sure, every game has an ending of sorts. For a certain class of classic game, though, that ending was always of the "You Are Dead Ha Ha Ha!" variety. From Robotron 2084's ever-increasing robot hordes to Missile Command's memorable "THE END" explosion, you went into these games knowing that failure was not just an option, but really the only option.

Then there are the games that seem like they should go on forever but, for one reason or another, just don't. Whether it's because of a coding error leading to an unintentional "kill screen" or a simple design choice stopping an otherwise never-ending series of loops, a lot of games that seem unbeatable at first glance can actually be conquered in one way or another.

To be clear, these aren't just games that are hard to beat (though most of them are incredibly difficult). These are games that, by all rights, shouldn't have a victory condition yet eventually reach a point where it's technically impossible to keep playing even if you don't fail in any way. Enjoy.

Snake

The GIF that inspired this list (and became a hit on reddit over the weekend) is probably the only way you'll ever see a perfect game of Snake, the simple 2D game that's so old that Managing Editor Eric Bangeman wrote a BASIC version in 1982 (though this animation looks like it comes from a Russian Flash knock-off with the same general gameplay). Sure, you do technically "lose" when every single section of the playfield is taken up by a piece of your snakey body. But considering that it's technically impossible to get a better score once you've achieved this feat, we think it's safe to call this one a "win."

Pac-Man

One of the most well-known accidental endings in gaming, Pac-Man descends into chaos after 256 levels, when an overflowing 8-bit level register causes half the screen to be filled with random symbols and become unbeatable. This actually means you can complete a perfect game of Pac-Man by eating every pellet and swallowing every ghost in all of the game's 255 levels, a feat first pulled off by the legendary Billy Mitchell back in 1999 and later bested by David Race, who completed the feat in a blistering 3 hours, 33 minutes, and 1.4 seconds.

Donkey Kong

The second-most famous kill screen in all of gaming was popularized by the 2007 documentary The King of Kong, which shows Steve Weibe's memorable journey to beat Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong high score. While the error occurs once the level counter reads "22," you actually have to beat 117 "screens" before an overflow error messes up the bonus counter and internal timer, leaving you without enough time to even make it up past the second girder. Only a few people in the world are able to consistently reach this screen, but even then, there's no known upper limit to the score you can obtain in those 117 screens, thanks to the role of luck and ever-evolving point-hoarding strategies.

Fun fact:Donkey Kong actually includes a bit of code to stop the level counter from going above 99, despite the fact that the timer bug stops the game at level 22.

Dig Dug

Yet another classic arcade kill screen, Dig Dug's "ending" comes after round 255, when the titular hero loops back to "Round 0." There, he finds only a hellish void where he can't even move before exploding over and over again, until being finally, mercifully spared by the sweet release of oblivion. The horror. THE HORROR!

Also see:This poignant comic featuring Dig Dug and Pac-Man contemplating the meaninglessness of existence in the face of the inevitable kill screen.

Duck Hunt

If you can manage to kill every duck through level 99 of Game A in this NES classic, it will loop back to a version of Round 0 where invincible ducks bounce around the screen at warp speed before flying away. Eventually, the ducks don't even bother coming out, allowing that damn laughing dog to keep bouncing up and down, tittering at your misfortune.

Also see: The arcade version of the game, Vs. Duck Hunt, which actually lets you shoot that dumb dog in a bonus round.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

In Oblivion - almost limitless in it's gameplay- after a few hundred hours play (500, in my case) the dreaded "A-bomb glitch" usually occurs where the character can move around but all animations freeze, creatures just stand there motionless, no doors can be opened etc.

I used to think it was a bug, but perhaps it was a nod to classic kill screens of the past. Kudos, Bethesda!

In Oblivion - almost limitless in it's gameplay- after a few hundred hours play (500, in my case) the dreaded "A-bomb glitch" usually occurs where the character can move around but all animations freeze, creatures just stand there motionless, no doors can be opened etc.

I used to think it was a bug, but perhaps it was a nod to classic kill screens of the past. Kudos, Bethesda!

Wow, I had no idea I was only about 40 hours away from the kill screen.

The Tetris video was insane. Its worth watching just for that point at about 3 minutes when it looks like the video has just doubled in speed.

You'd think given where arcade games were played that they would all essentially have become impossible on an exponential curve. You've got to start easy to keep people coming back but you don't want an expert spending all day on two coins.

As I recall Ghoul's and Ghost's kill screen was about 8 seconds into the game for me

You'd think given where arcade games were played that they would all essentially have become impossible on an exponential curve. You've got to start easy to keep people coming back but you don't want an expert spending all day on two coins.

people i thought beat them under special circumstances, like free play. maybe not when they first entered the market but years later in garages.

Anyone want to agree that there is a big difference in 'beating' a game vs the game crashing or spazing out due to a technical limitation?

Agreed. I love the article, but the headline is misleading. Kill screens aren't "games you can actually beat". If anything, a kill screen makes it so that a game is technically unbeatable because you can't continue playing.

A few of my friends have been able to get Grandmaster on Tetris: TGM. It's amazing to watch. What I find funny is that with the more recent movement rules (True Rotation System, lock times, etc.) is that I've had discussions about Tetris Theory. Never thought I'd be at that point when Tetris had originally come out.

Even when I had my old Atari in grade school, the endless style gameplay (even if there was some eventual end condition like this) never really appealed to me.

I am much more drawn to fixed-length levels that are hard to master, so you can play again and again trying to improve your score. These games are great because even though the core game can be completed in some number of hours, there is a ton of replay value to be found in mastering a level and the scoring system. (Sin & Punishment: Star Successor and Link's Crossbow Training rank #1 and #2 in playtime on my Wii, and it's not really close)

Also, one time I played the free-throw game on Wii Sports Resort for so long (3 hours? 4? Not sure) that soreness in my calves made it uncomfortable to walk for several days.

The easiest way to make an unbeatable puzzle game beatable is to make it multiplayer. That defines winning as being better than the other player.

Tetris DS has a fun multiplayer mode.

I've seen multiplayer versions of snake. Not only do you have to worry about yourself but you can literally screw other players over my surrounding them or cutting them off into a dead end. (Time Splitters 2 has one as an Easter Egg with some catchy music.)

Probably the best multiplayer puzzle game I've played would be Loopz. It involves creating circuits from various pieces, like a cross between Pipe Dream and Tetris. I got into a grudge match with my dad playing this that lasted for nearly six hours for one game.

Anyone want to agree that there is a big difference in 'beating' a game vs the game crashing or spazing out due to a technical limitation?

Agreed. I love the article, but the headline is misleading. Kill screens aren't "games you can actually beat". If anything, a kill screen makes it so that a game is technically unbeatable because you can't continue playing.

Technically, this is true. But as an "emergent gameplay" concept, yes, a kill screen can definitely be considered a valid "win state". It's the closest you can possibly get to having "completed" the game.

I was playing Snake before 2000. It's a much older game than that. I learned how to program looking at Snake code in MS QBASIC in 93.

I remember programming it in QBASIC as well, but the article didn't say it was created in 2000; it said Snake became ubiquitous once it was a game on Nokia phones.

Woo, same here! NIBBLES.BAS and GORILLAS.BAS were my first introduction to programming as a young'un. Games distributed as pure source in an interpreted language made exploration so easy, since you could just pause the execution, change an upcoming line of code, then resume play and see what effect your changes had. Are there similar things these days (I would assume in Python) that are simple enough to be approachable to a young kid?

Woo, same here! NIBBLES.BAS and GORILLAS.BAS were my first introduction to programming as a young'un. Games distributed as pure source in an interpreted language made exploration so easy, since you could just pause the execution, change an upcoming line of code, then resume play and see what effect your changes had. Are there similar things these days (I would assume in Python) that are simple enough to be approachable to a young kid?

Ah, memories... My first introduction to programming was actually writing a Centiped game in LOGO. After this, it wasn't unusual for me to spend a Satruday afternoon typing in code gathered in one of the then popular "game magazine" into my parent's Apple ][

I always liked the theory that (regular) Tetris is unbeatable, because even if you had the insane reflexes and endurance to keep playing forever, simple mathematics would dictate that, eventually, you'd end up with nothing but S and Z shaped tetriminos, making it impossible to clear any more lines.

I was playing Snake before 2000. It's a much older game than that. I learned how to program looking at Snake code in MS QBASIC in 93.

I remember programming it in QBASIC as well, but the article didn't say it was created in 2000; it said Snake became ubiquitous once it was a game on Nokia phones.

Woo, same here! NIBBLES.BAS and GORILLAS.BAS were my first introduction to programming as a young'un. Games distributed as pure source in an interpreted language made exploration so easy, since you could just pause the execution, change an upcoming line of code, then resume play and see what effect your changes had. Are there similar things these days (I would assume in Python) that are simple enough to be approachable to a young kid?

Ah, QBasic and QuickBasic. I loved tweaking the explosion effects from the bananas to ever increasing insanity. Good times.

I spent countless hours as a youth trying to beat some of these games. Also. Jet Set Willy on a Sinclair? Does anyone remember that?! There's a Java version on the internet somewhere. Completely authentic from what I can tell.

I beat Shadow of The Beast 2 under UAE Amiga emulator a few years back. Could not beat it back then on a real Amiga 500.

I had always assumed that the Light Cycle minigame in the original Tron arcade game was based on the Light Cycle game in the original Tron movie.

Tron (and to a lesser extent, Snake) was based on the Atari 2600 game Surround and the arcade game Blockade (Surround was an unofficial port of Blockade to the Atari). The Tron light cycles basically took the gameplay of Blockade and Surround and... Well, you've seen Tron. Then they made a game based on the movie.

I remember the Activision patches for high scoring in some of those games. I sent in for a couple of those patches, but I will never forget the day that I set out to get the 1,000,000 patch for Laser Blast. Once you get past a certain level, Laser Blast settles into this pattern where every single screen is exactly the same. You just continue doing the same 3 movements on the joystick for hours and hours as your score gradually increases.

Eventually, I got to 1,000,000 and as the little blurb in the back of the manual said, the score turned to exclamation points. EXCEPT the dirty bastards at Activision had programmed the game to restart after dying just by moving the joystick, because apparently they expected games to be restarted frequently in the massive frustration of the early levels. So, I spent hours getting to the exclamation points, then set down the joystick to go get a camera, and the damn game reset.

I was playing Snake before 2000. It's a much older game than that. I learned how to program looking at Snake code in MS QBASIC in 93.

I remember programming it in QBASIC as well, but the article didn't say it was created in 2000; it said Snake became ubiquitous once it was a game on Nokia phones.

Woo, same here! NIBBLES.BAS and GORILLAS.BAS were my first introduction to programming as a young'un. Games distributed as pure source in an interpreted language made exploration so easy, since you could just pause the execution, change an upcoming line of code, then resume play and see what effect your changes had. Are there similar things these days (I would assume in Python) that are simple enough to be approachable to a young kid?

Ah, QBasic and QuickBasic. I loved tweaking the explosion effects from the bananas to ever increasing insanity. Good times.

i remember in high school (early 90s) a friend modified snake.bas to make it three-player. the hardest part there was first finding a keyboard that wouldn't freak out with that many keys being pressed simultaneously (a standalone exe borrowed from Star Control II helped test the keyboard for multiplayer use), and then figuring out how to fit 3 people comfortably around a keyboard so we could actually play.

i also enjoyed changing the physics in gorilla to make gravity super light/heavy, and of course changing the power of the explosions.

another classic - editing the INI files for Scorched Earth to change what the tanks say when they die.

I've been playing for 20 years and haven't ascended once, though admittedly it's an on-again, off-again relationship (mostly off). I bought a PDA in the early 2000s specifically because it could run Nethack, though, and I was taking linear algebra that semester.

The earliest version of what you call "Snake" was "Snake Byte" published by Sirius Software back in the late 80s. It ran on the Apple ][ and the Commodore 64 at least and was written in assembly. With its barriers and clever level design it was a real "quarter eater" in the days of arcades. My kids were really too young to play it then.

I'd love to play that version of the game again with all its levels, bouncing plumbs (or apples) and barriers.

And I know I'd love to play Squish 'em too just for old times' sake. I don't think that one is available in any form for the Commodore emulators. Also published by Sirius Software.